Escaping from it all is Offaly nice

WITH soaring costs, political uncertainty and global financial meltdown dominating all our lives, it's difficult to find a bolthole, somewhere to truly get away from it all. Difficult, but not impossible.

All you have to do is find somewhere globalisation hasn't fully reached. A trip back to the family roots in Ireland seemed just the ticket, so, with Himself accompanying me for the first time, we set off for the Emerald Isle and the family in County Offaly.

Irish folk know it, but to most Brits, who easily recognise the names of counties such as Galway, Cork or Kildare, the conversation goes something like this. "Where are you going?" "Offaly." "Awfully what?" "No, Offaly. It's a county." "Never heard of it."

So what chance of them having heard of Lusmagh, a small parish outside the small village of Banagher, which is outside the small town of Birr?

This is bog Ireland, where the "roads" are single-track, corkscrew affairs, bordered by 10ft hedges, and night is black as pitch, there being nothing like a street light for miles.

Even by day you can only drive for about ten yards before hitting another "back on yourself" bend.

Things have come a long way since I was a child. Seven years ago my uncle finally got a telephone; last year he had central heating installed running off the 40-year-old, turf-fired kitchen range. Nowadays there's television and everything ... well, not quite everything, which is why places like Lusmagh and, I'm told, the Outer Hebrides here in Scotland are really the places to go to escape gloom and doom UK.

It's life in the blessedly slow lane, although Himself took some time to adjust from city pace.

Breakfast is bread and butter. Lunch is meat, cabbage, carrots and, of course, potatoes. Tea is ... bread and butter, possibly with whatever cold meat is left over from lunch.

In a discussion about food, my uncle confessed he had seen pictures of, but had never tried, a pizza, put off by "all dat stretchy cheese". He once had pasta though he wasn't sure what sort. "It was thin and flat ... like the laces on me boot." Tagliatelle we surmised.

Himself's laptop was a bit of a revelation. "Would you be gettin' more information on a big computer than that little lad?"

Over the years I've become used to the simple life there, in fact I revel in it. After visiting the local lock on the Shannon, run by the same family for as long as everyone can remember (in fact you have to drive through their farmyard to reach it), popping into the parish cemetery to "see" relations who had gone, and visiting my favourite aunt for coffee and gossip, I remarked on the pleasant, action-packed day. Himself was speechless, none of that equating in his mind to "action".

To keep him busy, I took him off to the local pub two-and-a-half miles away – it being three-and-a-half years since I had last set foot in the place.

"How are ye? How are things in Lusmagh?" said Michael behind the bar, as, without needing to ask, he poured my usual glass of Guinness.

Himself was perplexed. Was this evidence of some mystical Irish psychic ability or an extraordinary memory? I shrugged. "Neither. He just knows I have Guinness."

Everybody knows everybody else. And if they don't know you, they can guess from your face to which family you belong. Hot topics of conversation might be a new priest, a local land sale, births, marriages and deaths. Small details are remembered, because life there revolves around people, rather than banks collapsing in New York and budget airlines folding. If times are hard, well ... they've been harder, much harder, and in living memory. Before the Celtic Tiger roared (and Ireland found new prosperity through the EU), families often lived hand-to-mouth, 12 to a thatched cottage. An oft-quoted line is "I've seen the two days", meaning the hard times and the good times.

No-one wants a return to the times of hard-won self-sufficiency and 16-hour farming days, but they were recent enough for people to realise that what matters is a home, food, warmth and health. And that attitude is infectious.

Coming back to the comparative hysteria and madness of recession and panic, I couldn't help thinking that to keep sane and centred we could all do with a week in the sticks.

Getting shirty
Apologies to doting parents, but if there's one thing that irritates me, it's those little T-shirts suckered to the rear windows of cars bearing cute slogans such as "Tiny dude on board".

Oh, thanks for telling me. I was planning on putting my foot down and crashing into your boot, but seeing as you've got a little T-shirt on the back, I won't bother.